


Whole of an Ancient Evil

by Bryn Lantry (Bryn)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1990-01-01
Updated: 1990-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 04:31:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bryn/pseuds/Bryn%20Lantry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blake's clone is aboard, and Avon's perverse sexuality becomes obvious to Blake</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whole of an Ancient Evil

**Author's Note:**

> printed in the zine 'Fire and Ice', editor Kathleen Resch, 1990  
> Aside from the attack of the cliche chuckles, I quite like this. It has a story. It has politics. It has a punchy Blake.

#  
#

Stay, if you list, O passer by the way;  
Yet night approaches; better not to stay.  
I never sigh, nor flush, nor knit the brow,  
Nor grieve to think how ill God made me, now.  
Here, with one balm for many fevers found,  
Whole of an ancient evil, I sleep sound.

  
A. E. Housman, _An Epitaph_

#  
#

“Why so reluctant, Blake?” asked Avon in a melodious undertone. “Do you think of him as competition? A rival, perhaps?”

Irked by that sinister timbre, Blake nevertheless refused to snatch himself of its range. Anyway, Avon had him cornered on the end of the flight deck couch, leaning over the rebel from behind in the wintry blaze of his silver tunic.

“Hardly,” Blake chuckled, not looking around. “In fact I'm skeptical whether he qualifies as a human being.”

“Similar doubts can be harboured about many of us. Your objection becomes meaningless. I believe he might be useful – or failing that, amusing.” Avon sounded offhand.

“I wasn't amused,” said Blake. “I consider myself copyrighted.”

The technician's mood swung. A puff of hot, emphatic breath reached Blake's ear as he answered, “I mean to rescue him. This will be my operation, Blake. My risk. Therefore your disapproval is academic.”

Obviously Avon had a bee in his bonnet about this. Blake chewed on a finger, thinking. When Orac had caught wind of a rumour about Blake being for sale in Ohnj Verlis's slave fair, Blake had dismissed the story as some kind of publicity stunt. Avon, however, had remembered that clone left on a deserted world with Imipac several weeks ago. Pirates might have picked him up, Avon argued, or else a clever officer involved in the Coser hunt could have kidnapped him and earnt a supplement to Space Command pay. Grinning, the technician had suggested purchasing the imposter as a pet.

And here Liberator was, twelve hours later, orbiting Domo. Blake had consented to come and investigate – no more. But maybe it would be wisest to permit Avon to follow through his whim. Mildly, Blake said, “I don't necessarily disapprove, Avon. After all, my face appears to have proved a liability to him.”

“Precisely. He is probably suffering because his captors think he's you.”

“Hmm. And what was that an appeal to, Avon?” queried Blake, leaning his head back to see the technician.

Unholy dark eyes drilled down into his. “Your honour, Blake. Why not? If it works.”

Damned strange man, thought Blake. “You believe he's in trouble.”

“That ship must be Federation.”

The rebel pondered the unmarked ship whose orbit about Domo Zen was tracking. Liberator had arrived at the blackmarket planet to find the pseudo Blake already sold, to the anonymous captain of that vessel. “We've no evidence she's Federation,” he said.

“Blake, tell me who in the galaxy would meet your exorbitant pricetag only to treat you gently? Whoever has him, he's a slave. Naturally he's in trouble.”

“There's a whole dungeon of slaves down on Domo,” said Blake darkly. “Human ones.”

“Since you cannot attack a whole planet of pirates, they are not the issue.”

Biting his finger harder, Blake reflected, if Avon's right and that unoffending – creature – is the victim of punishment I earned –

The rebel stood. “Agreed, then, Avon. We'll teleport across as soon as possible. She could leave orbit anytime.”

Swiftly, Avon glided in to block his path from the couch bay. Blake stopped short, just avoiding tangling himself with the neat, resplendent figure. He tightened his jaw, annoyed as always by these physical games Avon played – never mind the verbal ones.

Hands tucked away behind him, Avon lifted one tapering brown eyebrow. “I teleport, Blake. I told you. This mission is _mine_.”

He might have been warning Blake off a woman, the rebel thought. A fierce, personal glare, possessive grammar. And his nearness was a sly kind of bullying.

“Have you a plan for your mission?” Blake asked politely, meeting those eyes which he saw in overwhelming detail.

“That ship's a three-berther at most. I hide myself, and pick off the crew one by one.” A gleam of teeth. “Like Sara on the Ortega.”

“And if she leaves orbit with you aboard?”

“You follow her, quietly. When her personnel are inoperative, I stop the ship and transport, with my guest.”

Rasher than three of my raids put together, thought Blake. Why such eagerness? Curiosity? Or some scheme as unguessable as the original function for which Servalan commissioned his 'guest'?

From the weapons console, Vila suggested, “Can't we just sneak after her into deep space, prime the neutron blasters and tell whoever's aboard to hand over their slave?”

That distracted Avon from his experiment in mesmerism. “No, we might find him damaged,” he answered the thief, and walked over to the arsenal.

Blake gave a private scowl, ruffled and unruly after being freed from Avon's cage. Then he watched the technician strap a gun at his silver hip. Blake was half amused, to see this aberrant seizure of gung-ho. “You've no chance of going alone,” he told Avon, with the weight of a command. Damned if he'd grant the man enough democracy to kill himself.

“Then I shall take anyone except you,” came the retort, quick as a snake biting.

“Afraid I'd confuse him?”

“You would prefer he had never been made.”

No doubt the rebel had given that general impression. Still, Avon sounded for all the world as if Blake had personally delivered his clone to the slave markets. Mentally, Blake threw up his hands. “Have it your way, this time, Avon,” he said tolerantly.

Some last smouldering words – “Oh, I will, Blake.” Then Avon left in the direction of the teleport.

Blake sighed, heavily enough to heave his shoulders. How peaceful was his flight deck in the technician's wake. Surplus emotional energy, that was Avon's problem, and he hoarded every bit of it to barrage Blake with. Times like these, Blake wondered if the man ever thought of anything else. He ought to find himself a hobby.

Like collecting Blake clones? As another instrument in their feud, presumably.

Cally climbed down from the piloting station. “I'll go with Avon,” she offered. “He's not a true clone, Blake, but the Clonemasters wouldn't create something less than human. He will be at least a true person.”

“We'll see,” said Blake. “Remember Liberator will be detectable by that ship, Cally. I'm sacrificing the hidden orbit to remain in teleport range. We don't know whether she can identify us. So make it fast.” He shook his head. “I don't like this mission. See that Avon's careful. Tell him teleport will be available, and if she looks like moving I'm snatching you out.”

“He'll grind his teeth,” said the Auron, smiling. She armed herself and followed Avon.

Paging Gan to operate the teleport, Blake thought, perhaps I should be flattered. Then again, perhaps Avon has a fancy to hang the clone in his cabin and throw darts at him.

#

Iron coalesced around them. Avon swung his gun arm up and down the narrow passage. No-one in sight. “Go that way,” he directed Cally. “Kill anyone who doesn't look like Blake.”

“A pro keeps it simple?” she asked. A phrase of Largo's, which Avon liked to borrow for Blake's edification.

The technician smiled, and crept away. Gun ringing himself slowly, he traversed half a ship's worth of emptiness. An ugly vessel, and quiet as the grave of Blake's clone. If it was, Avon would have Vila melt this stark metal into a randomly racing ball. Let Roj Blake persuade him otherwise.

One direction Avon forgot to watch – upwards. From the struts overhead a dead weight fell. Knees buckling, Avon crushed both elbows into the thing clinging to his back. No good. A chin jarred his spine and his gun cord was ripped from its socket. Avon cursed – mutoid. So the ship was Federation. Told you, Blake.

You told me, too, Avon thought. Reckless. When was I ever so reckless? Your damn doing, Blake.

Mutoids executed only when ordered to, so surrender was temporarily safe. Not that Avon had much choice. Snarling, he was marched along in the custody of this pasty-skinned not-woman. This was one quick way to find the clone.

In the cockpit of the craft a tall, sinewy figure rocked on her heels, facing the spacescape. A laserprobe was clasped in the hands behind her back.

Here Avon was yanked to a halt. The mutoid reported, “A stowaway, Brigadier.”

The figure swivelled, and her eyes raked him. “Who's this smart fellow? Kerr Avon, if I'm not mistaken. Well, well. I presume you used your teleportation trick?” The brigadier glanced to another mutoid, propped stiff as a puppet in the pilot's chair. “Scout the ship for others. Just keep scouting until I tell you to stop.” Coming over, the officer angled Avon's face to either side with the cold metal of her probe. “Fine criminal profile. You've misplaced your ringleader, Kerr Avon. I assumed his gang must have cashed the scum in. But evidently you want him back. Interesting.” Thoughtful, she rapped the probe against her leg. “How much is the bounty on this one?” she asked the remaining mutoid.

“One million credits, sir.”

“The price suggests you're as evil as Blake. I wonder. Well, my child will have an inheritance again. Ohnj Verlis paupered me. But two million for a brace of terrorists will mean financial compensation too for Renny. Blake will have a small something missing. Nothing necessary for a trial and a syringe of liquid death, though. And I think the Supreme Commander will sympathise. When it happened, she personally granted me special leave. If not I'll accept demotion quietly, or serve my time.”

Something missing? Avon watched her narrow, austere countenance, misgiving tight in his gut.

“You can be witness,” said the brigadier. “You might learn a lesson too, my fine assassin. To the brig,” she cried as though leading a charge. Avon was pushed after her.

He kept an eye on the bad omen of the laserprobe, which the brigadier swung in rhythm with her soldierly pace. Captive or not, Avon was glad he hadn't listened to Blake, or the clone would be alone with this military madwoman. And where was Cally?

The cavalcade of officer, prisoner and mutoid arrived at the brig, and – there he was. Strapped to the wall in energycuffs. Costumed like a circus performer in Ohnj Verlis's sale livery, cheap and gaudy. The desert heat of Domo, Avon supposed, was their excuse for slashing that apricot shirt to his belly button. As for the pants – notoriously, work slaves often doubled as easers of frustration. So the red Arabian Nights breeches were sheer, with embroidery of gold thread where most necessary. A little niggardly on the embroidery, Avon thought. Imagine Blake as some backwoods farmer's harvester and harlot when the cows ran too quick to catch.

Verlis had obviously known this was a fake Blake, or he wouldn't be dressed for the open market – the Federation reward was far more profitable. Equally obviously, that doyen of the slave trade had neglected to pass the information on to her customer.

Blake-like, the clone scorned to notice either his fair gear or the energycuffs. He monitored everyone and everything with mistrust and a sullen dignity. Avon thought, he's existed for eight or ten weeks and, I daresay, has met with nothing but maltreatment. Small wonder he looks like Blake on an unreasonable day. When he surveyed Avon his manner became neutral, but the mutoid plainly revolted him.

Falling into parade-ground stance between her two prisoners, the officer announced, “I'm Brigadier Leesal. Does that ring a bell, my pervert?”

Apparently this epithet was meant for the clone, who hadn't many bells to ring. If he knew what a pervert was, or for that matter a brigadier, he didn't show it. But Avon recognised the name. A war hero from the Michales Uprising, five years ago.

“I have one child,” she went on. “His name is Renor. Eleven this year. A beautiful boy. Bad nerves, though. I think he'll be happier after I tell him the man in his nightmares can't possibly hurt him anymore.” With a rictus of a grin, she jerked loose the clone's breeches.

The laserprobe. Sweat dribbled under Avon's tunic. Blake's 'moral deviation and indecent assault'. Though Avon didn't know the boys' names, that must be it. How like the Justice Department to pick the young alpha son of a war hero, rousing up the jingoism and bigoted indignation of the dome herds.

Blake the second, he noted, wasn't entertaining Leesal with signs of fear. A gust of pride swept Avon. True clone or not, he had Blake's raw courage. And Roj Blake's mood-betraying eyes. Wholly Blake, too, was the gorgeous fistful of flesh about to be burned away. Not that Avon would recognise that if he fell over it. Because Blake was straight. Upright, square, straight. Dear Blake thought being queer meant you had a bellyache. I do, just now, thought Avon.

Clammy mutoid hands still twisted his wrists. His gun was ruined, anyway. Swallowing down revulsion, Avon grated, “Leesal. You're throwing away an opportunity to succeed to Servalan's office.”

The brigadier turned to him in merriment.

“You know who I am,” Avon persisted. Impossible to watch that happen, impossible. So he was reeling off an impromptu speech, selling his soul, or what was the same thing, his brain. “Technology means power. I can give you teleport. A long-range detector shield I'm currently perfecting. Engines capable of time distort sixteen. Think of the possibilities. Touch him once and you get nothing.” If only she was the ambitious kind.

“Trade with a terrorist?”

“I never break my word. Consult my psych-file. That's why I almost never give my word. Agree, and I'll give it to you.” Naturally, Avon was playing for time. Yet possibly he meant what he said. If the real Blake were four metres away with a laserprobe threatening his cock, mightn't he mean anything, everything? A crisped, smoking absence – Avon swallowed again.

“This is worth something to you, is it?” The brigadier swiped her activated probe past the clone's crotch. “What do you do, play masochist to his sadist? Degenerates, the pair of you. You're a bit old for a paedophile.” Crackling with disgust, she finished, “But perhaps he remembers my boy while he sticks it to you.”

Avon resorted to the truth, “Brigadier Leesal, Blake didn't go near your son --”

“Shut him up,” she yelled to the mutoid.

A black glove flattened Avon's lips against his teeth. But the mutoid wasn't even watching what happened, corpse-eyes unfocused. Waiting in the energycuffs, the Blake double stared steadfastly at Avon.

Into the brig hurtled a thin flying figure, one boot thudding into Leesal's gut. Cally, at last. Savagely, Avon attacked the vampire, feeling less human than she was. A strenuous confusion followed, after which he found that her neck was snapped. Good. She wouldn't miss her miserable semi-existence. Next Avon straddled Leesal, who was sprawled unconscious and whey-faced after Cally's onslaught. Confiscating the laser rifle from her belt, Avon primed it. He aimed point-blank at the Federation hero who'd planned to castrate Roj Blake. Should he execute her before she tried again? If Blake were here, he might answer –

“No,” Blake's voice came. “All life is linked.”

Avon spun as though he'd heard a ghost. You can't separate living beings, Blake had once preached to him. Almost, the technician laughed. Throwing the rifle down across Leesal's chest, he walked towards the clone. He still couldn't agree less with Blake, but he chose not to alienate the clone so quickly by killing in front of him. Particularly as the prisoner was smiling at Cally while she jimmied his cuffs with the laserprobe. Benignity illumined the face which had before been intractably clouded. Both expressions were more wholehearted than even Blake's.

“What kept you?” Avon asked Cally.

“The second mutoid is dead,” was her only answer.

Then Avon devoted his attention to Blake's other incarnation. Except that he averted his eyes when the clone reclaimed his Arabian Nights pants – without haste, as though no-one had taught him modesty. Affecting his most civilized manner, Avon asked, “Did they hurt you?”

The clone gestured a negative, and his loose, heavy curls flopped. No-one appeared to have thinned those clusters, either, since he was stranded on the Imipac planet. Curious eyes pondered Avon. But the clone asked no questions. He thrust a frank hand towards Avon. “You helped me. Thank you. My name's Roj.”

Clasping hands was an antiquated custom, relegated to the Outer Worlds. To an alpha, the effect was familiar and gauche. Somehow, the Blake clone made it attractively so. Avon found himself squeezing warm knobs of knuckle – the first time Blake and he had deliberately joined fingers. “Kerr Avon,” he answered.

“I suspected you might be. You work with my original."

“You might call it that. Where did you get your information?”

“Space Command debriefed me in detail.”

“Well now. I trust you didn't believe a word they said about me.”

It took a moment, but then the clone's face crinkled in humour. “I disliked the Supreme Commander,” he replied. “She was ethically insane, like her.” He glanced to the prone brigadier.

“This one had something of a grudge against your original.”

“I know. They debriefed me in detail,” repeated the clone. “But Rashel debriefed me too. I no longer believe many words they said about him, either.”

“Well, if you're no longer ashamed of your original, perhaps you'd be interested to meet him? Just now he's away on our ship, muttering bad-temperedly because we haven't reported in.”

Cally came forward. “The Liberator will be safer for you than anywhere else.”

“Unfortunately,” agreed Avon, “you've the countenance of the most hunted criminal in space.”

The clone hiked a thick brow. “I've his everything. Or did you think the Clonemasters are merely portrait painters?”

“My people are the Auronar.” Cally graced Roj with one of her kinder smiles. “I am cloned, too.”

That intrigued Roj, whose face gentled. Until Avon interrupted their little clonish communion by snapping a teleport bracelet on Roj. It locked with a satisfyingly possessive clink, Avon thought.

“What's that?” Roj asked him, inquisitive more than suspicious.

“That is your passage to the Liberator, where vengeful officers with laserprobes won't get near you.”

“Thank you.” Having forgiven Avon the slur on his identity, the clone smiled with a dash of rue. “And for keeping my anatomy whole.”

“When the time comes,” remarked Avon obscurely, “I will remind you of it.” And he called for teleport. This certainly promised to be piquant, he thought.

#

Blake stopped the drumming of his fingers against the console only when his two errant crewmembers arrived on the flight deck. Between them came a messy-haired fellow with a distinctly unhandsome face and tawdry, exotic clothes. For the time being, Blake ignored his presence. “Ran into trouble?” he inquired of Avon. From the corner of his eye he noticed Jenna smothering a smirk at those – red, were they, and gold, and see-through? – trousers. Blake focused sternly on Avon.

“No more than anticipated,” said the latter. “As you can see, the operation was a success.”

But Blake still didn't look to see. “Whose ship was it?”

“An irate enemy of yours.”

“Which of the many?”

Avon actually seemed reticent about answering. That bad? wondered Blake. Making a moderating gesture with one hand, the technician said, “A Brigadier Leesal, Blake.”

The rebel's teeth gritted, like a cage for the wounded animal in his throat. He contemplated his knees until he knew he wasn't going to swear or shriek. Then he nodded, “The one with the son?”

“Exactly.”

Why must that always wrench his guts out of place? Tiredly, Blake kneaded the bridge of his nose. Over the drone of computer-intoned atrocities, he said a bit loudly, “Introduce me to myself.” Raising his head, he caught the tail end of Avon's gaze as it removed to the clone. Blake tried to analyse what he'd seen in those creamless-coffee eyes. Curiosity, yes, but had there been, besides, a smattering of concern, sympathy?

Compassion from Kerr Avon, he ridiculed himself. My optimism attains a new galactic record. Yet Blake was warmed to an odd degree, softness welling treacherously at the possibility.

Which left Blake in a more amiable mood for meeting the clone. Mentally bracing himself, the rebel scouted over that mirror-come-to-life. Avon ought to sell me half his looks, he thought. The transaction wouldn't leave him short. I'm in for a morbid time if I'm to stare at myself all day.

His reflection spoke. “Hello, Blake.”

“Hello, Blake,” responded the rebel, as patiently as possible. “Welcome aboard.” Hitching his fingers in his trouser pockets, he wondered what other conversation there was to make. “As bad as it got, I always tried to avoid talking to myself.”

“First sign of madness, the proverb goes,” it said. “Which wouldn't be a complete surprise. Terrans have no cultural preparation for coping with cloning.”

Cally interjected, “I can counsel the two of you there.”

“Thank you, Cally,” said Blake with a marked lack of gratitude.

The Auron smiled subtly to herself, and patted the clone's sleeve. “Come and get to know the rest of the crew,” she suggested.

One eyebrow higher than the other, Blake watched his shadow's retreat. Then, mellower and graver, he restored his attention to Avon, who'd stayed beside Blake's console. “What did the boy's mother have in mind, Avon?”

The technician clearly had to search for delicate phraseology. “Poetic, if barbaric, justice,” was his eventual lemon-crisp answer.

“I see.”

“With a laserprobe.” Dark eyes turned significantly upon Blake. “I wouldn't have liked to arrive there any later.”

Gnawing his lower lip, Blake resisted the natural wince. “Can't say that I blame her.”

“She's still alive.”

“I'm glad.” Blake struggled towards shaping a sentence or two which might deliver his feelings into the blessedness of another human ear. “It might be sensible, at that, not to allow an imposter of me to roam the galaxy. Earth could undercut Liberator's popularity simply by programming him to rape three children or the like. I ought to be glad they didn't warp me into actually performing those horrors. Given their techniques, that would have been quite possible. You said the only defence against Imipac was slavery. The only defence against that kind of mind-twisting would surely be suicide.”

“Nightmares, Blake,” Avon dismissed this. “They didn't go that far.”

The words were untender. However, camouflaged from the others behind the console, Avon's lean and clever fingers reinforced them by wrapping – shortly but strongly – about Blake's wrist.

If only for a microsecond, Blake recanted of every negative thing he'd ever thought about Avon – and that involved a great deal of recanting. Had anyone asked him just then, the rebel would have sworn Kerr Avon to be the finest fellow of his acquaintance. Blake swung him a glowing look, but the technician was staring away, his Grecian profile severe as if he disowned his action.

So Blake crammed the pleasure instead into his voice. “Tell me, Avon, what do you intend to do with your pet?”

“Show me a planet that isn't hazardous for Roj Blake. In the meantime, he might learn some survival skills from the assortment of lawbreakers you call your crew. He needs toughening up. He's ignorant, and soft. But he had a bad genetic start.” Avon did glance at Blake then, not flatteringly.

“I wish you luck with his education.”

“Why does he bother you, Blake?”

“Why, Avon? No cultural preparation. Besides, he reminds me why I sleep alone.”

Avon's eyebrow jerked up, amusement seeping through the cracks of his usual deadpan. Secretly, Blake grinned to have made Avon smile. He thought the man might be stuck for a rejoinder, too. Avon was observing the group to the fore of the flight deck, where lively Jenna was discussing the pirates of Domo with the clone, as knowledgeably as if the planet were an old stamping ground of hers. Blake hoped it wasn't, but you could never quite tell with Jenna and her odd friends. Very odd, Blake thought, if said pirates were the ones responsible for that ghastly costume wherein a bit of embroidery was the sole guard of his privacy.

“Yes, well,” Avon's bland tones came, “just now, everyone can see that.”

Rich laughter erupted from Blake. He's wickeder than a corps of riot troopers, thought the rebel in delighted discovery. “Do show him where the clothes hold is, won't you?” Blake said.

“Naturally.” Avon gifted him with a sharklike ivory smile, before heading towards the clone.

#

For the seventh time in a row, Avon dumped his opponent's brawny red-clad shoulders down on the mat. Lungs working briskly, the technician kept them flat there, the heels of his hands rammed into thick, etched sinew. “Surrender,” he suggested silkily.

A genial laugh, more robust than was right for a defeated combatant. “Never.”

“If not, then fight me. With conviction, Roj.” A hot bead of sweat fell from Avon, rolled down the clone's corded neck. “Actually, you've a natural advantage over me.”

“I hadn't noticed.”

“Here, Roj.” Avon squeezed the sturdiness which the ruby t-shirt hugged admirably. “Confidentially, I doubt you'd find your original helpless on his back under me. Not that I've ever tried.”

“Well, I don't necessarily take him as a role model. I find swatting you with conviction psychologically difficult.”

“I'm charmed. However, I shall throw you about this mat until you learn what those muscles of yours are for. One of the things.”

“I'm glad to hear there are others. Because I remain a pacifist.”

Avon said, “I would have thought some charitable soul had already taught you the others. Also, I was the under the impression that my logic had proven your Rule of Life unviable.”

“Unviable for a barbarian.”

“Am I a barbarian?”

“Frequently,” whispered Roj with friendly eyes.

Like an earthquake, the warm solidity under Avon heaved. Flung onto his rear, Avon found his arms whipped high and his legs trapped beneath a knee or two. “Satisfied?” Roj growled.

Ah no, Avon answered mentally, swallowing the other man's humid breath like fumes from a narcotic plant.

Rampantly mischievous, Roj inquired, “Is this a correct fighting tackle?”

A heavy roundness of ribs and muscle pressed Avon's sensitised nipples. I refuse to believe he's flirting with me, thought the technician. But he had to pray the non-existent gods to keep his penis small and meek and moral. Evenly, Avon said, “It suffices, Roj.”

“Rashel, for example?”

Avon met irises less monotone than his own, irises which could resolve into an unlikely black or else season over with greenness. “The charitable soul? Yes, for example.”

“Rashel was superstitious about the cloning process. Besides, we were there only a week before the Federation captain located us.”

“Well now,” said Avon.

Coming into the gym, Roj Blake was confronted with a disorienting vision of his own rambling limbs laid over Avon. Love or war? he thought laconically, oscillating between amusement and resentment. Aloud, he said, “Don't break him, I need him to keep Zen tame.”

Amusement had the ascendancy as Blake saw Avon shove his clone off none too gently and scramble for his feet and his dignity. Blake raised the end of a finger thoughtfully to his mouth. “Running into trouble, Avon?” he asked.

For once, Avon resembled the thief he was. In fact his mien was somewhat similar to the one Vila was liable to assume when overconscious of having a trinket of yours in his pocket. Except that Vila wasn't ferocious when cornered.

“Not nearly as much trouble as I ought,” said the technician crisply. “I told you, he's soft, Blake. I've pinned him seven times this session.”

To the clone, Blake said, “You'll ruin my reputation.”

“Or, in some quarters,” replied he, “save it.” The clone stalked away, rolling a bit on his heels – do I walk like a sailor? wondered Blake – and lunged up onto a monkey bar.

Blake gave Avon a crooked smile. “I can tell he's as fond of me as I am of him.”

“You're certainly no narcissist, Blake, neither of you.”

“There's only one of me, Avon.” The rebel eyed his swinging double. Remembering the scene he'd stumbled across, the symbolism of those legs closer to Avon than Blake had ever physically been, he scowled, humour gone. Cally claimed she enjoyed the most intimate and rewarding of relationships with her clone, but damned if Blake liked his individuality being stolen. All his life he'd fought for the right to be his own person. Now, because he was doubled, his emotions told him his uniqueness was halved.

“You hate him, don't you?” said Avon softly, curiously.

Blake pulled a face. “Would you be exasperated by a clone of yours running around, fiddling with your computers?”

“Put that way --” Avon cocked his head. “But Roj believes in passive resistance, and he wouldn't dirty his hands by fiddling with your revolution.”

Only with you, was Blake's pang of a thought. He didn't repeat it to Avon. Instead he criticised, “The man looks like a sheepdog. Won't someone take pity and give him a haircut?”

“His flowing locks function as identification, Blake. I thought you would appreciate that, considering your paranoid reaction when Vila mistook him for you. Hence, also, the difference of address.”

“So that's why you call him Roj.”

“Naturally. Why else would I?”

Blake shrugged, knowing his perverse streak was at its most headstrong, and not caring. “Oh, you might like him better than me,” he suggested with a trouble-hungry simmer of a smile.

The rebel was gratified to note how wary Avon looked – as though he were navigating a seeded warzone. “That wouldn't be difficult,” he rapped out – a rather stock retort.

Blake's beam became cherubic. “Perhaps you prefer a Blake who hasn't the spirit to resist the Federation – or yourself. Easy to handle, is he?”

A pretty shade of pink smattered Avon's cheekbones. Blake was tempted to bellow a laugh, but he only kept his head slightly lowered and his eyes as belligerent as a bull's horns. He realised he'd just deliberately employed a double-entendre. And he still didn't care.

For a moment Blake was sure the technician would step back, make a neutralising remark, get out of the emotional boxing ring. But no, he underestimated Avon's own perverse and angry heart. Those lips contorted in a quick, feral snarl, which Blake had witnessed as boding evil several times before. Grabbing Blake's tunic – another ominous habit – Avon hissed, eyes like a meteor storm, “If you look past your egoism you will see that Roj isn't you. Nothing like you. A separate entity. Therefore, my friendship with him is none of your business. Leave us alone.”

Which was the most sentimental remark Avon had ever passed about Blake. The rebel's heart largened with a life-giving transfusion of affection. Two could play contact sport, Blake thought, and for the first time he copied what Avon often subjected him to. Arms sneaking around the man's waist, Blake hugged him, like Avon once had in the heat of battling Travis. Blake chuckled to be cuddling this most difficult, most dear of his comrades-in-arms. “Spurious reasoning, Kerr Avon,” he kindly told that pale, onyx-eyed face. “If he isn't me, he's a stranger. So I think it every bit my business. And very little of his. Anything you give him, by rights is mine. Deny that.”

His captive sibilated more like a reptile than a human, and chopped cruelly at Blake's bicep. Wincing, Blake gave way, permitting Avon to march to the exit.

The clone, quiet as the shadow Blake considered him, followed Avon.

Wrapped around Avon's little finger, snorted Blake. No wonder, either. The infamously thersitical Avon hadn't yet pronounced one acerbic word to his protege – not that Blake knew of, anyway. The last time Blake had recommended Avon to use his charm on someone, he'd meant the suggestion that Avon possessed some sardonically. That was before he'd watched Avon tutor the clone in astronavigation. Funny how charmingly the fellow could flip through starcharts.

Blake reminded himself he came here for a swim before hitting the pillow, not for a mope session. Although, to be honest, they often ended up as the same thing. There was something about the prospect of his sleeping couch that tended to set him brooding. Its emptiness, maybe.

Stripping off his earth-toned tunic, shirt and pants, Blake locked the gym and reduced the lighting to a sullen glimmer. He swam a few slow laps for the pleasure of working his bone and flesh, for the play of blood in his arteries and the crisp water swathing his nakedness. Pulling into a corner, he propped his arms along the pool's rim and weaved his thighs lazily in the gloom. Animating cold swelled around the skin of his belly, his rump, his genitals. Blake stopped the motion, swallowed down a throatful of anguish, and thought.

Early on in Liberator's perpetual voyage, Jenna had said to Blake, over soma, “Avon's bi. Smuggler's instinct tells me.”

Blake had smiled and answered, “I doubt he'd like us speculating.” Only Blake did speculate, later that night, in the solitude of his quarters although he'd had the choice not to be solitary. He'd meditated upon secretive, adventuresome Avon, who scoffed at rules, who always saw both sides of a problem, unless the problem were ethical. Who had an unusually wide latitude of thought, because his religion was to take nothing on faith, including societal traditions. Blake admired that aspect of his skepticism, how Avon always made up his own mind. Bigotry was mostly failure to think. Yes, Blake concluded, easily Avon might be bisexual. There was, besides, something about his manner. Perhaps an absence of those paranoias people developed in aggressively heterosexual cultures. A flavour of behavioural androgyny.

Floating in the darkened pool, Blake formed the thought which had been nagging him – that he'd never seen Avon act less like your average straight than when in the company of his friend the clone.

The implications of that observation overwhelmed the rebel. Kerr Avon wishing for him, sexually? Not that the thought hadn't crossed his mind, but Blake had accused himself of arrant vanity before. Now, he was nearly persuaded. And, primarily, he was touched beyond words.

Blake remembered Avon in his plain black gym suit, a glow to his complexion even prior to Blake's ambiguous taunting. Surely, he hadn't – had his wicked way, already? Then again, there was no good reason for a biological copy of himself to have any particular yen for women. Sexuality was so crucially a matter of psychology, and psychology was the one area where the clone and he differed. For all Blake's input, Roj could be enamoured of warty green mushrooms if he'd had a formative experience with one in his tender weeks.

Or of dark and charming embezzlers, if the equivalent.

The next thought was more difficult, but the rebel supposed that this – if not a feverish fantasy of his – ought to change his attitude. To tramp about like a bear with a sore head because Avon had found a sexually accessible lookalike of him wasn't fair. Nor necessary, maybe, if Roj was only that. Only a body to Avon, whereas he himself –

Confused, Blake made his wet curls whip his cheeks. He was scared to behold how territorial he could become about Avon when pushed. Possessiveness was an ugly emotion. Losing his temper like that had been selfish, and not a little peculiar.

Blake rolled in the water. Dear gods, he was lonely.

#

A mechanical squawk under his hands complained of negligence. Avon's wandering mind was jerked back to the job, whereupon he stared querulously at the remonstrating detectors.

“I thought computers liked you,” said the one who was making Avon make a mess of the dectector calibration.

Avon bared his teeth. “No. Let them hate me, so long as they fear me. Zen likes Blake, because with his inimitable flair for absurdity, Blake says please whenever he requests a function. I hope they institutionalise me the day I am polite to tarrial cells. There, you have me anthropomorphising.”

“Hmm. Ought I be insulted?”

The teeth bared further. “Trick question. But to answer it, you've only been Blake for three months. There is hope for your sense yet.”

“The Blake you have when you're not having a Blake?”

Apprehension sliced through Avon like a laserprobe. Roj was bridling, in the tradition of his original. Roj was going to refuse him too. On good grounds. No Blake ever took kindly to – exploitation. As rashly generous as Blake often was, why should this copy cure one and a half years of frustration induced by the original? What motive had he to compassionate this damned and damned again obsession?

Only, if the clone refused – what was left to do? Abandon Roj Blake, that heterosexual sentimentalist, or rape him? One or the other, Avon vowed bitterly, one or the other.

Laughter rumbled, bluff, swishing Avon's fears away like wind. A sizeable hand dropped on his shoulder. The other Blake banished from his mind, Avon peered from under his lashes at this one. His good-natured mouth, his even nose which Avon would swap anytime for his own eccentric one. Plenty of expressive flesh to cheek and jowl, in preparation for the heartiness of his shoulders.

Roj leaned in, an amiable arm going around Avon. “Well, and _are_ you a masochist?” he asked.

Avon observed the playful smile in some doubt. Until he remembered Brigadier Leesal and her guesses as to why Avon wanted to buy her pound of flesh with a fortune in technology. “It would be a brave man who would test the theory.”

“Good. Because whatever my original's notoriety, I'm no sadist. In fact I'd like to be rather gentle than otherwise with you.” A wise gaze captured Avon, and warm fingers his chin. “If you would humour virginal curiosity,” Roj said – and kissed him.

Avon's arms compassed a wonderful width of shoulder, his mouth abandoned to moistness, caressing flux, the roughness of potential beard. His nostrils flared at the pungency of a human body, while a slit of his eye admired new details of Roj's face. Sex spun fast in his groin whenever that thick tongue wiped his. When it inched deep enough to trigger cock-hunger, Avon groaned.

The kiss was curtailed. Roj wrapped Avon against him, simply that. Avon could feel him ruminating. An abundance of black curls camouflaged Avon's hot cheeks. Penis rebelling against his trousers, he sweated impatiently there in Roj's quiet and ignorant arms. Chronologically he's a child, Avon recalled. I'm the paedophile now. To chasten his physical importunity, Avon reflected that at least this one didn't go green at any mention of erotic dysfunction, like the other did because he'd once been accused of doing wicked things to small boys. So the old Blake was wrong to demand all of Avon's time with Blake for himself. The rebel would hardly envy Roj that rather astounding kiss, for example. But Avon's guess was that Blake was a romantic. Unfortunately he'd twigged to the crudity of Avon's interest in him, yet Blake was the kind who, when you said sex, heard love. Yes, that was Blake down to the ground. His idealism would be disappointed when he learnt that Avon merely liked the clone, and most badly lusted after him. Dear Blake was mistaken to think he was missing out on much of his precious sentiment.

A hand fondling his back, quite down to nether regions rarely trod by man, reminded Avon what choice delights Blake was missing nonetheless. Quivering overruled his body – Roj must think him demented. He'd understand more once Avon had depraved him. Pushing back soft loops of hair, Avon swarmed kisses over the neck underneath, hoping his enthusiasm was catching. Meanwhile his fingers, trained to fine calibration of detectors, strafed Roj's chest through the cream shirt – a loose and charmingly open-breasted specimen which Avon had picked out for him. Roj's nipples were hard, terribly hard in the general tenderness. Tweaking one, Avon shut his teeth and his eyes tight. Roj's embrace became crushing. Ah, now, this biological copy may have inherited every bit of Blake's earthy streak. Early in their acquaintance, Avon had divined how powerful was Blake's carnality – that celibacy didn't fool him. Avon dared further and further until he struck trousers. Also of Avon's providing, these were peach-soft and tight and black as coal, and, to the provider's mind, sexy. As for what lay underneath – “Objections?” hissed Avon. Not an example of romantic eloquence, but he was lucky to be more than monosyllabic.

Fingers ruffled his hair in a fond gesture of care. Unlike anything Blake had ever tried. Absolving him from corruption charges.

Avon ripped fastenings. Exposing Roj Blake to his every sense was too good to miss anything of, and discarding finesse, he slithered out of the hug to his knees. Face febrile, he peeled away dark cloth from the excitement of fleshtones. Strong loins like warm china, a forest-coloured tangle of hair, as riotous as elsewhere, and blood a moody glow in his long cock like candlewax aflame.

Worth a year and a half, Avon thought. Worth a year and a half to grasp his naked hips and look.

Why?

Damned if I understand.

Roj was pendulous, heavy but not yet stiff. After all, his genetic model hadn't looked culpably upon a male in his thirty four years. Resisting sadness, Avon buried one hand in that wavy thicket, hooked the hips tightly to him, and began to make moist, licking, sucking love to the thing for which he'd sell teleportation to anyone.

Which didn't hang around for long. Indeed, if this ill-famed process was half as magnificent for Roj as it was for him, then dear Blake's clone would be queer for life. Avon's skin crawled with desire, everywhere, but concentrating vehemently near the root of his tongue, where he tugged Roj in and in for appeasement. Sweat and absorption filtered his sight away until he was in a dreamlike state, his blood a wild racket. Fairly absurdly, Roj was clutching the nape of his neck so he wouldn't escape, hips rolling. Underused muscles felt burning and swollen, but Avon only drove them the more, ambitious for Roj's enjoyment. Rewarding him, Blake yelled, racked by his first foreignly induced orgasm and poked gloriously too deep. Avon swallowed come since devouring the man entirely was probably out of the question. Tenacious as a barnacle, he pulled tenderly while the flesh softened. Roj, likewise, seemed reluctant to untrap his neck.

A richened, roughened voice came down. “Is calibrating the detectors urgent?”

Avon relinquished his prey, to say dreamily into the damp crotch, “Blake believes so.”

“Come to my cabin, Kerr.”

Naturally. Avon kissed the trail of dark down on his belly. The only thing he cared to calibrate was erotic sensation in this body. “Mine,” he answered. “I'll initiate you in the use and abuse of excellent fermented fruits and vegetables.”

“And in what besides?”

“If you like, Roj, a diversity of arcane and forbidden practices, also excellent.”

“Sounds intriguing.” Gentle hands hauled Avon to his feet, without much help. “Forbidden in whose society? I'm not up on galactic mores.”

“Do you know what a faggot is?” asked Avon, as Roj explored the potentials of junction between a nose and an ear.

A chuckle. “According to Clonemaster Fen's language programming, a bit of wood.”

“Exactly,” grinned Avon, after the manner of a demon who'd come across a white soul straying in his territory. “Follow me, Roj.”

Circumspect, he chose an unfrequented route to his quarters. Running into Vila with knotted hair and a smug expression and a dazed clone at his heels would be reputational suicide. Not that his shipmates' opinions impressed Avon, but it might be horribly embarrassing for Blake. Besides, everyone would misunderstand the nature of the situation, and accuse him of harbouring a crush upon the aforementioned rebel. Which would be horribly embarrassing for them, once Avon had explained their pedigree and personal qualities to them. Or maybe blown Blake's head off to disprove the hypothesis. Yes, he liked the latter path.

They reached his cabin safely. Avon shepherded the clone inside, eyes glittering as he passed, then secured the door and disabled the intercom. “Alone at last,” he said flatly, for Blake had never been here. “I find Destinian orange brandy is best enjoyed in the nude.” Leaving Roj to ponder that subtle hint, Avon went to his shelf of bottles and jewels. He had a pair of genuine gold cups, in which the orangey amber swam as though he were the filthy rich decadent he aspired to be. Why people tended to buy or purloin two of things was a mystery to Avon. Illogical, in his case. Until now. When he turned with the brandies, he saw a masculine form ornamenting his room, every tall and broad inch bare.

Everything he ever wanted.

Avon threw his head back in a laugh.

As Roj tried the brew, the technician watched nut-brown coils tumble across his cheek. “Have you drunk alcohol before?” he asked.

“The Federation captain offered me something, in transit to Domo. I offered it to his uniform. He shot Rashel when she ran.”

“Well, his would have been inelegant anyway. What do you think?”

“Peculiar. Nice. Like you.” A warm wink, and Avon was smothered in an orange brandy kiss.

After which Avon murmured, “Nice is not an adjective in common use regarding me.”

“A nice barbarian,” said Roj, and plucked at Avon's tunic. “Show me more of you.”

“I think Clonemaster culture must be the most ethical and least moral I have encountered,” said Avon while he methodically removed his clothes. “Or maybe it's just you, Roj.”

“I'm not sure of your semantic distinction,” Roj laughed. “Though I do believe my original, for example, would do better to terrorise less and seduce you more. For one thing, he'd be a sight happier.”

Avon halted in dismay, hands going limp at his waistband.

“Am I embarrassing you, Kerr?”

“No.”

“I realise I'm not the only Blake you desire. Just the least foolish. Need help with those trousers? Funny clasps, hmm?” Maladroitly, Roj fumbled about his tender crotch, mischief in his eyes.

Avon spoke softly. “You mustn't tease when I am attempting to be civilised.”

For answer, a capacious hand grabbed, through fabric, the whole of his genitals.

That stampeded the lust in him. Clinging to the strong, kneading arm, Avon choked, “I need you.”

“I know.”

A different wash of pleasure gave Avon peace. Smokey-eyed, he surveyed the pale muscular flare of Roj's thigh, his long, dark-furred, contoured leg. “Precisely how experimental are you feeling, Roj?”

“Anything,” whispered Roj into Avon's throat, then into the thatch on his chest, which prickled, “anywhere.” This time he unfastened the pants with perfect deftness.

Avon moaned shamelessly to see his penis appear and then disappear with that huge fist. He knew his glans dampened against the meditative perambulations of Roj's thumb.

Huskily, Avon informed him, “My bed is to your right. Get us there.”

“Brandy gone to your head?”

“Exactly.”

Grinning, Roj surrendered one portion of Avon, which jerked in grievance, to pick up the entirety of him. Blake enjoyed a dare, recalled Avon, enjoying the short trip. “You're a sylph,” was Roj's hearty declaration.

“Then why does your chest resemble a bellows?” inquired his burden lazily.

“You're a smashing one.”

On the bed, Avon employed martial means to flip Roj onto his back, for unmartial ends. Stationing himself beside a knee, he massaged that bone, then down the stout calf. Clenching a narrowed ankle, Avon leant to bite the sole of his foot. The arch seemed most erogenous. Avon chewed there and watched the supple legs twine in reaction.

Next he worked the other way. Roj's thighs divided for him to knead them in a slow and sweating hand. Avon urged the knee furthest from him to cock. That gave him passage under the thigh, to the tautened fleshiness of buttock. Groping beyond his balls, Avon caressed branching cheeks. A single finger dug in the well between. Avon elected for a soft knead, on the brink of penetration.

Covertly, Avon asked, “Like that?”

“Lovely,” purred Roj, arms hooking the pillow in drowsy abandon. “More.”

Well now, though Avon. No Terran inhibitions there. However, he forsook that tender puckering, to climb from the bed.

Roj complained, “Leaving me?”

“Extremely briefly.”

“You can walk?”

Avon bent over the joking eyes, which were amber and mellifluous. “In pursuit of my current intention I could walk naked in space.”

“Hmm.” With something of a flourish, Roj put a finger in his mouth. Eminently Blakean. “I wonder what this intention of yours might be.”

“Figure the matter out, Roj.”

Avon repaired to the bathroom. There, jumbled among necessaries, he found a damnedly unnecessary jar of perfumed cream. He returned to balance this on Roj's ribs. Crossing his arms, Avon observed as his guest smeared some on a finger and sniffed.

“Fragrant,” admitted Roj. “But not much in the way of excitation, Kerr.”

“You'll change your mind.” Avon straddled the man and croaked, “Moisten me for you.”

Quite grave, Roj anointed the penis that lay along his breastbone. Exquisitely. He finished when Avon was wet and a wreck.

“Now you roll over,” whispered Avon blindly. “If you like, Roj.”

“You could have used the orange brandy.”

“Roll over, my Roj, and shut up.”

Roj made a mock noise of provocation, and twisted between Avon's legs. High spirits, Avon analysed. I'll heighten them until he's orbiting. Retreating so that his loins hung over the split rump, Avon manipulated that generosity of palest honey. Heavily he lay upon Roj, whose thighs automatically sundered as Avon's narrowed. He whimpered, poised against the gate to Roj Blake's body. Passion was a stark and massive fact in him. Chary of hurting the man, however, he postponed until the ring gaped, oven-hot. Now Roj would yield nicely. Avon catapulted his glans inside.

No oath was drastic enough, which kept him from being profane in Roj's ear. Perspiration acted like oil, making their flesh skid as he trampled Roj into a position to give him more cock. Roj growled in taking it – from pleasure, if Avon wasn't mistaken. Then, rollingly, rhythmically, he was fucking Roj to the hilt. He tried to remember the man's virginity, but his hips were anarchic and wouldn't listen. A lunatic wailing threatened in his throat, like the lunacy of pleasure promising in his groin. He chased that mirage.

“God – Roj – god,” he screamed out as the pleasure hit.

When Avon could think again, he clambered awkwardly off Roj, his breath still whistling. He was frankly afraid to look at Roj, yet he'd never been so grateful to anyone.

A husky arm ringed him, dragged him near. “What do you call that?”

“Criminal perversity.”

“Damn nice.”

“You're catching my expletives.” Avon answered the one-armed bear-hug with his own tense, tight grip. I'm going to be happy, he thought, marvelling. Blake on the flight deck, Roj in my bed. I'm going to be, roughly speaking, happy.

#

Passing the recreation room, Blake glimpsed half his crew sprawled over the couches. He thought to pause for a chat with his people – his favourite recreation – but their conversation deflected that purpose. Instead, he listened in.

“Where's Avon?” Vila was asking.

Jenna yawned. “On watch – impersonating minor orbital bodies, no doubt. Why?”

“Not that I want to speak to Avon, I just have a new trick to show his pet. He makes a good audience, does Avon's pet. Politer than most.”

“Pet?” snorted Jenna. “I can think of another word.”

“Not where Avon can hear you,” returned Vila, offhand. “Or Blake, for that matter.”

“Might do Blake good. Wake him up to what game Avon's playing.”

“Is Avon playing a game, Jenna?” That was charitable Gan. “Actually, only Cally's on the flight deck with Avon. I haven't seen Roj.”

“Probably being curious somewhere or other,” said Vila. “I'll search.”

“Probably catching up on his sleep.” Jenna's mutter approached the door, along with her footsteps.

Blake resumed his journey. The pilot caught up with him, her sunny hair buoyant. Blake found her company agreeable, warming. He smiled down.

“Not on nightwatch again?” asked Jenna.

“I drew the short straw.”

“You seem prone to the short straw.”

“My luck must be poor.”

They exchanged nothing more until coming to the flight deck. Avon glanced neutrally from the scatter of components of adumbrated meaning over the couch. “Good evening, Blake.”

“Good evening, Avon. What are you inventing?”

“Can't you tell?”

Blake studied the acrostic of his work. “Not yet.” Seeing Jenna prowl to the piloting station and Cally, the rebel alerted Avon with a soft, significant expression. Both men monitored the parley.

“Why not go to automatics?” suggested Jenna, leaning on an elbow. “No hazards in this neck of space.”

Cally perched there looking serious. “I was practising the manoeuvres you taught me.”

“Yes, I estimated as much in the rec room.”

“Was my flying rough?”

“Clean as a whistle. Trickier tasks for you in the morning, I think. But for now, Blake won't mind automatics.” Jenna appealed to the rebel.

“Enjoy nightwatch while you can,” he agreed. “I may have to cancel them if the revolution steps up.”

After Jenna had stolen the Auron away, Avon said, “Technically, of course, it's xenophilia.”

Blake was grinning. “Will be.” Thinking the remark curious, Blake faced the man, who seemed remote in his work. “That's a dirty word, Avon, for a burgeoning romance.”

“I merely stated a fact,” was the answer, abstracted to the point of dreaminess. “Facts are rarely romantic.”

Blake sunk to the couch, opposite that bleak profile. “Certainly the Terran behavioural codes are unromantic,” he chuckled. “I prefer to avoid their terminology.”

“Such codes are functional, Blake. The Federation intends to eliminate genetic dead-ends. Non-procreative aberrations. I, on the contrary, prefer not to mince words.”

Blake stared. No good protesting that the fellow was homoerotic – Avon knew. Furthermore, he might main Blake for mentioning the circumstance. Softly, Blake said, “Nothing wrong with love between aliens, Avon.”

“Not morally, no – morality is a nonsense. The wrongness is scientific merely. Therefore I do not suggest that Jenna should obey the species' survival programming. Not being a moralist, I believe one may as well be unnatural if one can get away with the deviation. Nature, after all, makes a bloody deity.”

This soliloquy was delivered to a circuit tracer balanced in Kerr Avon's precise fingers. Appalled by his cold-blooded guilt, Blake hurled nearer to him, elbows catching on his knees, hands futile a few feet from the man. “You're mistaken,” the rebel contended. “Believe me, Avon.”

Those chiselled lips jerked. “I predicted you would have a strong opinion on the subject. I am morbidly curious to learn the direction of it.”

Blake told him. “About nature I agree, Avon. The civilized species strive to go several better than nature. That's why you mustn't apply animal standards to humans. Procreation is irrelevant to the moral rightness of one emotional being in sexual intimacy with another.”

“Would you sleep with a Sirian, Blake?”

“I honestly couldn't tell you. But every child begins as polymorphous perverse – isn't that the strange old expression? Whatever segment of the population they learn to concentrate attraction on from there, must be judged by the yield of joy and meaning, not of offspring. Cally's people are separating propagation and erotic love altogether – losing the last remnant of animalism.”

“I ought to have guessed your unscientific permissiveness.” Avon gathered his equipment onto a tray. “As a rule, people only find moral what they themselves do.”

The rebel remained in his urgent posture. “But you believe I don't think that way.”

For the first time since Blake had finished calibrating the abandoned detectors, Avon equalled his gaze. “I believe you're different, Blake, to the general run,” he conceded.

The knowledge that his simulacrum waited in Avon's cabin tripled the poignancy of eye contact between them. Blake saw how important his stance on divergent sexualities was to Avon. As for himself, his compassion skidded off into a maelstrom of obscurer things. Blake failed to keep that beautiful stare. Damn – Avon would think the liaison bothered him – just when he was persuading the fellow out of shame.

Before Blake could pull his emotions together, Avon whisked himself and his tray off the flight deck.

Blake gnawed a thumb, reflecting on how badly he was handling the situation. Was he supposed not to be bitter when nightwatch fell to him while Avon charmed and bullied the clone onto his face –? Or did Avon go for the inverse? Like one of the rare women from Blake's years as an ideal citizen exhibit. Why should a male be different, then? Apart from visually, and visually Avon was one of those people of ambiguous appeal, intriguing to either gender. Fine skin, as Blake had learnt courtesy of Avon's penchant for scarifying him from inches away. A kissable mouth, masculine or not. Homosexuality didn't scare the rebel. On the other hand, he was convinced Avon was afraid to try the real Blake. That would necessitate too much truth.

Clever as Avon thought his solution, sometime he'd realise a substitute wasn't good enough. When that happened, Blake faced the responsibility of a friend's passion. And there was only one kind response to the question Avon was putting. Blake resolved to experiment and see whether he was fated to disappoint Avon.

Graphically, he imagined the act at issue. No woman but his computer technician underneath him. Blake's heart muscle quaked, but his emotional sensitivity to Avon was old news. Right now he was investigating a tangent. The physical facts, then. Avon, his back turned, wanting like a woman –

Furtive elation slid beneath Blake's belt. He examined his hands, questioning himself. All right, extend the line of inquiry. Avon deserved everything or nothing. Hell, wasn't Blake erogenous there too? – even though it tended to kill any urge whatsoever. Postulate Avon reared over his shoulderblades and a masculine organ digging –

The left hemisphere of his brain kicked punishingly. Blake whimpered.

What was going on? Skin crawling, he jumped to his feet to escape the sensation of malignant weight on his back. Could he be so hung-up about –

Sodomy. That was what some anonymous citizen had screeched as Blake was marched to court – sodomite. The children. Boys, not girls. Blake had thrown up in his cell after reading the prosecution data. Repeated anal penetration was one of its less gruesome phrases.

Naturally, the state and Blake disagreed about the gender choice being a crime. Only the rape was. Yet a miasma of cruelty clung to the idea of men with men. Filthiness, even. Irrational as his reaction was, Blake doubted he could bugger anyone after that trial without queasiness. Come to that, he wondered how anyone could desire a person convicted of those assaults.

Spirits flagging, the rebel prognosticated how patient of such misgivings Avon was likely to be.

The more Blake stared into the spacescape, the more doubts he saw. What if he transgressed his erotic patterning only to stop short of a true homosexual's emotional engrossment? Not that Avon came across as the kind to tangle his heart in a bedmate, but in the technician's words, Blake was ever the optimist. Suppose Avon fell in love – a prodigy for which there was nil evidence as yet – then suppose Blake could go no further than the devotion of a friend. That would be a ghastly cheat.

Blake skewed his face. Truth was, the notion of dour, hostile, prim Avon crazy for his body was one impossible to leave alone. Avon must figure as much. Damnably intuitive, that one. He'd discerned how loath Blake was of the stagnant, dream-ridden night. Stray glances come evening evidenced his knowledge.

Wish I really was deviant, thought Blake. An abnormal ambition for a heterosexual, probably. But that was Kerr Avon for you.

#

Blake spied his clone and usurper exiting from subcontrol four. Off on a tool-fetching errand for Avon, the rebel guessed. Swamped under Avon's personality and as obliging as any slave. “Morning, Roj,” he nodded, observing very alphan leather trousers and silk. Blake himself enjoyed a slight unkemptness. “How are you finding the universe?”

“A mottled shade of grey,” answered the clone.

“I empathise.”

Solemn, Roj tilted onto the balls of his feet. “Funny, that.”

Blake chuckled. Empathy, Cally had lectured him, was the blessing of the sentient, and who more in tune with one's experiences than a clone? Well, the rebel couldn't see a quarter-year-old understanding his troubles. Still, Blake was short on confidantes. He offered, “You'll have to come and debate pacifism with me sometime.”

“Glad to.” Just like they were family, Roj grasped his shoulder. “Hating yourself in me isn't wholesome. We're not that bad, you know, despite me being thirty-three years off acting my age and you having a third of your mind warped.”

Over his confoundment, Blake parried, “Functional to hate myself, then, if I'm one third not myself.”

“I inevitably love you,” his clone told him. “So I get angry when I see you going wrong.”

Blake stared into brother-eyes. They tempted him to recognise himself as two and love back, profit from the extension of his being. For starters, to admit he'd been going wrong these several years.

Avon stopped him. Damn his own surliness, but that insult was festering since more than astronavigation began happening between this one and his favourite larcenist. Blake had noticed a heavy filigree of gold ringing the clone's neck. Well earned, no doubt. He gestured. “From the jewel hold?”

“From Kerr.”

The intimate name tolled in the windswept chamber of Blake's heart.

Roj snorted, unforgiving. “You've kept him in hell,” he growled, and left curtly.

Champing his bottom lip, Blake swerved into subcontrol four. There was Avon's stiff, red-leathered back. Impersonation was a two-way trick. Keeping aft of the technician, Blake slunk closer than was his custom, smiling unscrupulously to himself, and honeyed his tone a fraction. “Can I help there?”

“Enormously.” Speaking soft as butter, Avon leaned lazily onto the rebel's breast. “You can kiss me.”

Blood whirled in Blake, crashing like sea against his temples to wreck thought. His whole spirit craved Avon – he would go to pieces otherwise – how could Avon deny him as he was doing?

Smelling a rat, Avon wrenched around. His huge, contented pupils narrowed to a mean dot.

Blake clutched the straws of his commonsense. He found enough to act gallant. “Delighted,” he returned. “Except I believe you're particular about which Blake you kiss.”

“Get out,” spat Avon. And in violent panic, “ _Get out_.”

Blake got out.

#

The dream was a revelatory wish-come-true, pandering to the ego more crudely than the awake mind would be caught doing. Cheeks cherry-red, sweat-dark hair tossed on his brow, Avon told him fervidly, “You can kiss me. You can, Roj.”

Blake penetrated, into bliss more powerful than he thought existed.

“Go on, love,” rejoiced Kerr, arching his beautiful amber body.

Every scrap of Blake's eroticism was activated by the projection of his ideal. He flipped over to batter his hips against the sleeping couch.

Then his overloaded cock refused him, wrung with grotesqueness. “No,” Blake sobbed and thrust a hand down where he hurt, tugging in the name of Avon.

Grinning, charmingly wicked, Avon flourished a laserprobe. With neat precision he spliced Blake's cock.

Hoarsely Blake screamed, again and again, weltering in blood. Through his terror he saw Avon mop his face with a surgical-smelling wad, telling him in a synthetic drone – like Dome Administration computer-speech – “Non-procreative aberrations, Blake. The wrongness is a scientific fact. Non-procreative aberrations, Blake. The wrongness is a scientific fact. Non-procreative --”

Blake woke. Gasping too fast, he clutched his genitals – whole, if knotted into hell. No blood in the bed. Just tears canting over his cheek.

Only a dream.

Bad dreams were rarely only dreams. The psychomanipulators gave him company, gave him help. The brainwashers. Blake's whisper accused the darkness of hating him. “Dome computer-speech.”

#

“Blake, you're a fool,” stated Avon. “Either that, or you have a death wish. Which latter would be entirely your own affair.”

“Come now, Avon, wouldn't you even wish me luck?”

The technician ignored that. “One citizen of Lindor intends to welcome you with a bullet. Or a bomb. Even should the other two billion welcome you with applause, as President Sarkoff guarantees, the exercise does not reckon up as worthwhile.”

Blake's eyes swept his crew. “In twelve days Lindor faces a referendum on whether or not to join the Federated Worlds. Sarkoff hopes for a crushing negative, which will end the years of ambiguity and clarify his task as president. Hosting me as a makeshift embassy from the resistance is a radical step – only weeks after his election. I surmise our lukewarm Sarkoff has learnt political courage.”

“Political recklessness,” said Avon.

The rebel treated him to a stare. “Recklessness should be buried in the garden until needed. Tyrannies have fallen to it. The second century of the Second Calendar is a time for the humane to dig up their recklessness.”

Jenna said, “And what exactly do you do on Lindor – or is your presence merely a diplomatic exhibition?”

“I never thought to be a political rhetorician,” laughed Blake. “But Sarkoff has asked me to address his parliament. Envoy of the popular anti-Federation movement, he said. Grandiosely put, but I'm willing to speak for myself, at any rate. The session will be telecast over Lindor. He sees this as granting his people free information. And for a major colony to treat the rebellion with the status of a government-in-exile or opposition party is a coup.”

“What do you plan to speechify about?” Avon inquired.

“The theme closest to my heart, Avon.”

“And the death threat? 'If Blake comes to Lindor he leaves with a poppy in his cold hands' – I quote.”

“Death threats happen every day in the political circus. Courteous of Sarkoff to tell me of the message. But I can't summon much dread for an assassin who makes theatrical noises about it beforehand.”

Cally asked, “Who do you think is trying to frighten you off?”

“The pro-Federation faction, I suppose. Sarkoff's parliament is a potpourri – extremists in the wings and the governing party between, leaning ever so slightly left. Yes, I'll do my small bit to lean them further.”

“Suppose your melodramatic ill-wisher has as much liking for purple blood as purple prose?”

“Sarkoff's security will be tight,” Blake answered Avon. “Anyway, I thought I was obsolete. Roj can step into my shoes and turn the resistance passive.”

#

One thing Avon liked in Sarkoff – he made no bones about his partisanship. “The man who gave me to my people,” the fastidious president was bellowing. “Founder of the – er, liquidated – Freedom Party...”

Fierce hilarity from the left of the hall, where sprawled the terrorist-sponsors and nihilists.

“I give him to you: Roj Blake.”

Cheering as wild as promised, except from the right of the hall, where huddled the uniform-fetishists and genocidists.

Only when the parliament's collective hands were raw – five minutes later – did Blake rise to the podium. He adjusted the microphone to his tallness, and threw his soul into his voice. “I'm a slave. I came to talk about freedom.”

Avon's eyes roamed suspiciously around the chamber. Even though a Freedom Party rank-and-filer, now Lindorian, was the guests' bodyguard and stuck as near to his old captain as Avon did. Fletcher Tye was the man's name, a pithy, eccentrically-dressed sexagenarian.

Meanwhile Avon saved one ear and often an eye for Blake himself. The show was worth that much – fearless leader was prickling the napes of Lindor. To at least one stiff-upper-lip alpha, his emotiveness was on the brink of embarrassing.

“Everyone has a different liberty. That is freedom's nature and freedom's meaning. When people speak of a Federated Lindor, they mean not one but two billion tragedies. And none of them little tragedies – there's no such thing. A tranquillised human whose brain cannot create the thoughts she would have thought – had Lindor clung to freedom. Another human told his spirit and mind and body have been judged as delta class – because Lindor sold his freedom. A girl lasered to shreds in the street for crying freedom. A boy choosing mutoid processing because he made love one of several wrong ways. I won't tell you two billion stories. I couldn't stand to. You'll see enough filth for yourselves once you sign your souls away.

“I'm fighting for my freedom. Firing at conscripted deltas. Firing at spectres in my heart. Damn you, fight for yours while you can still do it by voting. I wish every one of you freedom.”

As Blake left the podium, the anti-Federates present punched their fists in the air to a hall-rattling mantra of his last word.

Three hours later, Avon stopped fiddling with his gun – Blake was in the heavily-patrolled grounds of the presidential mansion. Only a dinner to go. Only waiters and the hero-fancying Tyce Sarkoff to watch.

“More firebrand than when you were a youngster,” said Fletcher Tye, who was minding Blake and Avon in the garden.

The rebel smiled without humour. “Too angry.”

Thumbing his bracelet, Avon asked for Roj. “Relatively safe to be curious now. Come and observe the rulers of worlds – tell Vila to teleport you.”

“You're risking him on the surface of Lindor?”

Avon stiffened under Blake's mild sarcasm. “To further his mistrust of the antics of Terra-derived races.”

When his captain became a pair of captains, Tye yelped. “A clone, Blake?”

“Roj is our ethics officer.”

“Great security. It should have addressed the zoo in your place.”

“Thank you, I face my own lasers.”

Tye nodded, looking doubtful. “I'm going to hobnob with the perimeter post – see you in five minutes.” He limped off down the path.

“Old guard,” Blake told the scowling Roj. “Thinks of made people as laboratory animals. No cultural preparation.” He winked, and on cue Roj mirrored him with his opposite eye. Avon was amused.

Walking between them in the narrow arbour, Avon mulled over the moody picture of Blake picking leaves and mashing them. With Roj there – tranquilly catching his hand, no less – Avon came to the decision to pry. Neutrally, he advised, “Tell me what's on your mind, Blake.”

“No, Avon.”

A rustle distracted Avon from his miserable profile. Jumpy, he peered to the end of the arbour, where a high hedge faced them. He distinguished a spot of unblended colour. Gun barrel, sticking through the bush? Just because you're paranoid... A solid weft of branches hemmed them on either side. Nowhere to push Blake.

To be doubly safe, Avon took two precautions. Fletcher Tye was his prime suspect – that probing about clones as stand-ins. Avon jerked out his weapon. Even as he drew, he snatched Roj and yelled to him, “Blake!” The real Blake ignored as if of no priority. He riddled the hedge with fire–-

Hoarsely Roj screamed – green light crawling over half his face. He plunged down, and Avon abandoned his trigger long enough to hail the ship. “Teleport Blake now,” he snarled. The music of particle disintegration followed quickly.

He was alone in the cage of trees. Avon lowered his eyes. Spit-laser, right in the brain – the left of Roj's face was burned and bloodied with residue. Avon was masochist enough to look for some fraction of a minute. Then he pelted from the arbour.

His target was reeling across presidential flowerbeds. Blake's old pal, all right, limping rather more severely now. When Avon shot him in the back, he listed completely over. Avon said, “Don't get up, you can fertilize the poppies.”

A raucous thumping began in his ears. The signal of madness? hazarded Avon. Then the sunlight greyed. He stared overhead. A giant underbelly whined past.

Sarkoff's mansion was being strafed – and that was a Bellisarius class, a Federation warship. She swooped again, her major drop splintering marble, a last sputter ploughing earth near Roj's arbour. Time to leave his corpse to the jackals – one last disservice. “Vila,” Avon half-whispered into his bracelet. “Get me out.” As he teleported, he noticed dirty blood on one of his boots.

#

“I can't believe such crude tactics,” Sarkoff repeated himself over the radio. “Seven years seducing us into union – and then hamfisted punishment like this.”

Blake listened grimly. “The Federation is unapologetic about its hard line on political criminals. I'm their citizen – I was their target. Any other hits were people harbouring me, therefore legitimate reprisals. Or so runs the excuse for terrorising you prior to the referendum.” A tread of boots, and Blake found Avon unbuckling his gun at the armoury. “Glad you're back.”

More clinical than was ever right for a human, Avon observed, “The president sounds alive and kicking.”

“Most got to the disaster shelter.”

“Some policy-maker in Space Command blundered,” said Sarkoff, pulling Blake's attention from the technician. “The pro-Federates won't find a publically digestible justification for this.”

“Just such crassness convinces me the Federation can fall. The power-obsessive mind betrays a certain stupidity. No, they were counting on a slave mentality in your people. I believe Lindor won't be manipulated by reward and punishment.”

“Liberator ought to leave us, Blake. Dinner, I think, to be re-convened at a future date.”

“Altogether safer not to invite me to dinner. Good luck, Mr President.” Blake switched off. “Jenna, standard by five, please.” Free for the phantom haunting his elbow, Blake turned, to see eyes glazed with elsewhere in tightened skin.

Avon announced, “Your Freedom Party stalwart.”

“Fletcher Tye. I wondered.”

“A Federation convert? Or merely purchasable?”

“No, that threat of his was a grudge note. I betrayed the party, you see. Told everything I knew. Maybe he thought I'm still under the influence of my rehabilitation. After all, there's not much history of psycho-manipulation patients reverting to their natural selves.” Blake wet his lips after that sentence. “Avon, thank you for doing what was necessary.”

“Anyone else,” remarked Avon, “would have jumped in front of you whilst firing. Instead.”

“Few would. And frankly I'm glad you're not among the number. But I'm truly sorry about him, Kerr.” Solicitude too much for him, Blake tried to pull the hard-angled figure against himself. Mistake or not.

His hands cherished nothingness – Avon was a pace's distance, complexion peaky. “I need to wash my boots,” he ground out, and retreated fast.

#

The Lindorian ran skittish fingers through his auburn hair, expression the usual tangle of pity and worry. “I want to try another brain specialist. There's an ex-combat surgeon I heard of this morning on the east continent. Apparently she garnered some expertise in laser trauma during one of the Federation's trifling forays in this sector.”

From the corner of his remaining eye Roj assessed and disregarded him. “If you like.” He sponged his crooked face with relentless patience, staring in the glass. The ugliness counteracted the pain.

“That last doctor, I feel, knitted your skull and swept any real damage under the carpet. I haven't lost hope for that eye, either.”

“One eye or two,” Roj told him, pondering the puffed left socket, “won't stop me.”

“I believe you.” His helpmeet laughed – thank the stars, thought Roj, who was tired of heaviness.

“Pour me a whiskey, friend Deva.”

“A modest one, please.”

“I assure you it won't rupture my cortex. And being cooped from general sight in your safehouse drives a man to modest whiskies. Go on with you.” The mirror refracted Roj's smile.

Ever obedient to his smile, Deva left the bathroom. Tired, too, of his image when it didn't argue revolutionary casuistry with him, Roj looked through the smoky pane to the street.

Possible shift of personality, one of the legion of medics had warned. “No,” Roj answered to the window. “I've just learned hell needs soldiers.” More Blake than Blake, because messed up sooner? Oh, self-knowledge was a Clonemaster art. And sniffing evil, he must give it name and face. That was his idealism working. What could Kerr be blamed for – being in love with Roj Blake the original and best? Roj was fond of the barbarian. Understood him more since going feral himself. Someday, maybe, he would tell Avon of his contagious bastardry in person, and hug him hard.

Good-intentioned, unhuggable Deva brought two glasses. Roj didn't mind the company. “To freedom, Blake,” toasted the safehouse keeper, knocking their whiskies. “The word which won a referendum.”

Roj chinked amiably back. “Down with the Feds.”

#

“Zen, extra range on the dectectors, please, thirty degrees forward. Report any ship activity.”

Tawny rectangles glowed. //Negative activity.//

“Thank you, Zen.” Blake chased pursuit ships from his imagination and returned to the galleons of his history work.

“I shall programme the machine to declare you are welcome. If you must be civil to circuitry, why not consummate the idiocy?”

Galleons too fled, as seventeenth century politics suddenly seemed boring. “Hello, Avon,” said Blake into his reader. “Come to brighten my nightwatch?”

The technician advanced into sight, in monotonous black as was his recent habit. He looked like a crow, beady-eyed under neat feathers of fringe. “No, to fetch Orac actually.”

If I believe that, I'll believe anything, thought Blake. “Stop and talk anyway. Zen wasn't much company. Forgive me, Zen.”

“Neither am I.” However, Avon perched on the couch, crossing his arms. “Gloat aloud, Blake, I am weary of telepathic sniggering. Once you are honest we can negotiate the question of whether our acquaintance proceeds.”

“I see. Was that designed to alarm me, Avon?”

A short, vicious look. “That was designed to determine whether you have any balls. Or whether you cannot even discuss the issue.”

Vulgarity wasn't like Avon, not even an angry Avon. “State the issue, then.”

Promptly he rapped, “My perversity as regards your clone.”

Blake crooked a finger to nibble. “Now, I know for a fact he had nothing I don't have.”

“There is a level, Blake, where your jealousy becomes either neurotic, or suspect.”

“Damn right.”

Cat-lazy, Avon snatched the hand Blake was biting. That ivory skin of his was hot. “What's wrong with you?” he hissed malignantly. “Do you want your rights to _this_?” Teeth nipped a joint, then he swallowed half the finger. His dark glare mocked Blake meanwhile – but he looked as wild as if engaged in a last ditch skirmish.

He was the most beautiful creature Blake ever saw.

Slipping onto his knees on the deck, the rebel clamped Avon's neck in the other paw and crammed a kiss upon him. Those cleanly-defined lips were cold and rigid. Blake kissed obdurately, hauling down when Avon strained for his feet. “Kiss me, confound you,” muttered Blake blackly, and saw a perturbation of rich lashes. Time to stop, he thought, but his mouth's bombardment turned uglier.

Under a bite, Avon's jaws yielded to him the hot, spicy pit of flesh between. A throaty noise escaped Avon. His retaliation upon the rebel was berserkly sensual, rising Blake's cock.

Blake would have liked to kiss the fellow til death did them rip apart. But if he didn't spoil the idyll, his brainbutcher would. He pried away the fingers anchored brutally in his tendon. When his tongue was his own, he growled, “Was that designed to shock me, Avon? You look a sight more shocked than I am.”

Avon wiped saliva from red, puffy lips.

“You think I'm hetero, Kerr Avon. Chaste and pure. I'm not. I'm programmed.” Remorseful, Blake read thwarted desire in the quivering of Avon's knee against his tunic. “Programmed to be of no further use to you. At least Roj was whole.”

Avon's eyes, found Blake, were actually a profound brown lair for his emotions. “You are queer, Blake?”

“More queer than you, I daresay,” Blake answered him gently. “I've not an affair in my pre-capture memory which I believe is genuine. And their labour in that direction had half-hearted results, you might be contented to hear – since I daresay you're more jealous than me.” Blake gave him a grin.

“And you – ?” Avon stopped there.

“Choose you, Avon? I doubt anyone other would have reminded me where I mislaid love. I always wondered why I liked you to an outrageous degree.”

Avon clenched his neck in a ramrod arm. His whisper was harsh – “Damn you, Roj Blake.” He hung on mutely for over a minute.

That may be the nearest Avon came to an endearment, Blake mused. Yet he was in no mood to mind, basking in the flinty embrace of the beloved prohibited to him.

When Avon untrapped him, the technician was looking businesslike. “You have managed to challenge other aspects of your conditioning, Blake. The political realignment. The memory suppression.”

“True. Only, I have reason to suspect this battle will be the nastiest. Brainwashing fights dirty, Avon. Digs itself into your personality and picks up your horrors. Remember Leesal's son. To slap me for imagining you, my psyche won't scruple to imagine him. That hasn't happened yet, but I dread it. And fear isn't a good mindset with which to ask the dragon out to play.”

“Nevertheless, you are a refractory man, and you will have the backup of a ruthless one. Assuming the stipulation that I shall be the beneficiary of any deprogramming.”

“You always tell I'm monomaniac.”

“Well, then, we have an agreement.” A bit furtively, Avon twined a curl, gaze dwelling on Blake's countenance. “When did you discover?”

Blake grinned. “I had a wicked dream of you. Rather nice you were, too, until the Federation intervened.”

“You intrigue me.” A foot crept around to cage Blake – in seductive play which compensated for not being permitted to fling each other on the deck. “Are you game to reveal the content of your nocturnal trespass?”

“You might renege,” laughed the rebel, burning from Avon's lean calf jogging his hip. In deviltry he whispered, “As I recall, I was fucking you.”

“There are some things, Roj Blake, you must not say to me without the provision of a fortifying drink.”

Which amplified Blake's laughter. “I just might correct that. We've a nightwatch to plan our campaign.” He sobered, asking directly, “What if I never can, Avon?”

“Kerr,” he amended, and gesticulated. “Well, since we are theoretical sleeping companions.”

“Kerr.” Blake rolled the name tenderly on his tongue.

“The fact is, your nature is too compassionate, Blake. I expect you can tilt at dragons once my sanity is the stake. Which event, I warn you, looks not far distant. Upon the subject of your corporeal dimension, I am not noteworthy for discipline.”

“You remind me I'm an optimist, Kerr.”

“At times,” returned Avon, a hand going to Blake's cheek, “I am not such a hardened pessimist myself.”

###


End file.
